


lanky, fumbling, and ill-mannered

by starforged



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Human!Outsider, Post-DotO, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 12:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19209469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/pseuds/starforged
Summary: a bunch of emsider drabbles specifically post-DOTOfeel free to request thingshere!





	1. Chapter 1

He should have been absolutely unremarkable, another face in the crowd of people Emily moved through. Tall, lanky, someone who hadn’t quite grown into his body yet, with a mess of black hair. For a moment, her heart stopped. A tiny skip, like a shock had rolled down her spine. 

Impossible. 

It had been months, and her mark was - his imprint had faded long ago, but the connection to the Void that nestled inside of her hadn’t quite died out. Still, her left hand flexed, as if she could feel the magic all over again. 

It was day. 

This was reality. 

And when she caught his eyes?

They were not the bottomless pit she still dredged up in her sleep, but green. Bright and curious. Alive. 

“Emily?” 

She blinked and turned back to her father. A concerned look held firm in his eyes as he watched her. Her lips parted. She wanted to nod. She wanted to tell him that she had thought - well, what?

That the Outsider was in the crowd? That a boy had made her think of a god?

It sounded completely ridiculous. 

The empress liked to think she wasn’t _completely_  ridiculous. She wanted to dismiss what she had seen.

“Corvo, could you - just let them know I will be a few minutes late?”  


His brow furrowed, but before he could pepper her with questions, she had already turned on her heel. 

It was ridiculous. She was chasing a phantom at best, and some innocent man at worst. And yet, she couldn’t ignore her gut feeling, couldn’t push it to the back of her mind as some coincidence. It had been only a moment’s glance, but she pushed through the street anyway, in the direction she thought she had seen him go.

If it _was_  the Outsider, then he was here for - well, she saw him. So he was here for her. Or for something he needed her for, at the very least. 

No, this was stupid. She stood at the edge of a street, rubbing a hand over her forehead. There was nobody here, and this was just Dunwall. Not the Void. He wasn’t here. He wasn’t _around_ , and she was going to have to accept that as the new reality of the world. 

One last look, Emily told herself. And then she would rejoin her father before he made her afternoon meeting entirely too uncomfortable. Corvo had a way of staring at people like he was thinking of every way he could disarm and dismember them with the least amount of effort. Good for a Royal Protector, but he wasn’t much of a secretary. 

The ghost of a smile tugged at her mouth at the thought, and then it promptly froze, torn between life and death. 

Tall, lanky, pale as the moon, with a mop of hair that desperately needed a good brushing despite objections. It was him, and it was not him. 

He watched her from the corner of the building he was leaning against, as still and silent as he would have been if he had pulled her from her dreams. But there was no mistaking the brightness of his gaze or the flicker of emotions that he didn’t seem able to tame. A frown, a twitchy smile, a grimace, as he tried to force his face to remain a mask of neutrality. 

She was going _mad_. 

His hands spread. In a shrug. In the awkward beckoning of an embrace. “The little empress.”

His voice had been colder before, had a bite to it that reminded her that he was not exactly human anymore. Maybe time had done that, maybe having his throat cut had done that. She couldn’t have been sure. There was no bite, but a cautious lilt all the same. 

She crossed over to him, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him into the alley behind him. Human. He was human. Her brain was trying to piece this together as quickly as it could manage, and while she might not have dared to manhandle him before, she knew she could now. He stumbled after her into the low light of the alley. 

“You’re alive,” Emily spat at him. It came out angrier than she meant it to be. She was more curious, more confused, than she was angry. He was alive. Human. Here. 

The look he gave her, the pout of a boy who wasn’t used to being jerked around, was too much. She still had him by the collar of his ratty jacket, watching the downturn of his lip, the sigh on his tongue, the glare he narrowed at her. Boy. She kept using that word, but it didn’t fit something that hadn’t been one in thousands of years. 

“I was freed.”  


For the second time that day, she found herself dumbfounded. She didn’t like that feeling, being unable to find the proper words, the right explanation, _anything_  at all to say. “That was possible?”

He nodded slowly. “It is surprising what humans will do to atone for their sins.” His fingers were  _warm_  when they pried hers gently off of him. Even in the shadows here, his eyes still shone brightly at her. 

The fingers of her left hand twitched.

She still had her manners, all of that good upbringing, and resisted touching his face, feeling that warmth. But only barely.

“Why are you here?”  


“To see you.”  


“You seek the help of the Empress?”  


“No.” The Outsider attempted a smile, a squiggle of a line across his mouth.   


She had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. 

“I came to let the little empress know that I - I didn’t just disappear,” he told her.  


The laugh dried up in her mouth. The tone was so soft, so serious. “And did you let all of your other marked ones know this?”

“Just you.”  


She was important, he was saying. She could read between the lines. The message was equal parts uncomfortable and exciting. “You could have sent a letter.”

“You wouldn’t have believed it.”  


That was true. She would have laughed and burned the paper in her office. She would have wondered who had thought the rumors were true enough to pose as the Outsider, who would dare to play such a trick. It would have been a good one, but not a believable one. 

“Very well then,” Emily said. “You’ve come all this way, and I’m sure you’re hungry.”  


“What?” His head tilted, and he made another face at her when her hand came up to tame his hair.   


“Food. Humans eat, and you must be hungry. I want you to join me for lunch.”  


Corvo could make her excuses, and she could make her excuses to him later. He’d understand, once she saw the face of her guest. 

The Outsider (was it at all appropriate to call him that now? but she didn’t have a name for him, and he wasn’t offering anything to her) continued to stare at her. He was quiet, as if trying to see what was going on in her head, what he could pick up from her by watching. Old habits died hard, but she knew that all too well. 

“You came all this way,” she continued. “So stay.”  


“I won’t say no.” He didn’t say yes, either, but he still followed her through the alley when she started walking.  



	2. Chapter 2

Emily doesn’t know if she’s done the right thing, bringing the Outsider back to Dunwall Tower. She doesn’t know how to navigate the particular situation that is a god that is a boy no longer a god. There’s a permanent scowl on his face as he walks by her side, gangly and awkward. What it must feel like to have mass suddenly, when you’ve spent millennia being the voice of the Void. His brow is furrowed over his paler-than-death face. 

She’s trying to not laugh at him, but there’s a twitch in the corner of her mouth where her resolve is only barely holding on. 

“You have to pick your feet up,” she - very kindly - tells him.   


There’s murder in those green eyes of him, and her mind is still reeling over that. Green, bright and alive and full of emotion. It’s startling. “I did walk before.”

“You seem to be a little rusty.”  


His fists clench. 

There are so many questions that are bursting to come out, and she’s almost as giddy as a child. It’s a feeling she hasn’t felt since - before her mother died. She’s been happy and had joy; it just hasn’t been like this. The gentle amusement that blooms in her chest and warms her.

“It’s strange,” he concedes.   


“Mm.” She presses her lips together and continues glancing at him as they slip into the gardens behind the Tower. What is she even going to say. _Hello Father, I adopted a stray. Oh, he looks familiar? Strange._  No, this was not going to be an easy situation.   


“You’re strange,” he continues.  


An eyebrow perks up. “What does that mean?”

His thin shoulders raise and fall in a shrug. He’s the strange one. “You shone with promise before, and I remember why I required you. But when I look at you now…” He shakes his head. 

The corners of her mouth curl downward. It’s not a frown, although she can’t say she’s excited at the idea of not shining any longer, but she also isn’t quite sure what the world must look like to someone who had seen everything. 

“Go on.” It’s her imperious voice, the one she uses to pass verdicts and speak to her court. Her chin raises as she stares him down.   


It elicits the faintest of smiles across his face as he looks her over, and while his eyes might not be fathomless now, it’s still an uncomfortable look. It’s as if he knows her. 

“The little empress, so haughty.”  


She’s about to say something, maybe about his ill fitting clothes or his place in the world now, but fate has its own ideas of humbling people. He trips over a loose stone in the most comical fashion, arms wheeling, legs trying so hard to stay upright. He careens into a rose bush, right into the leaves and petals, scattering a few lazy bees that had been taking a break. 

And her mask falls, that carefully placed resolve dissolving. Emily Kaldwin, first of her name, throws her head back and lets loose a barking laugh that bubbles and bursts. It fills the air. 

He backs out quickly, a branch stuck in his unruly black hair, thin red lines along his cheeks and hands wear he touched the thorns. His face is as red as the flowers he’s become acquainted with, breathing hard, chest heaving. He manages to get to his feet again.

“That - must have hurt.” She’s almost doubled over at this point, drawing the gazes of gardeners and passerbys. Her arms are wrapped around her torso. Perfect. This is perfect, after the hell she has gone through for the Outsider, for herself, he deserves to feel even the barest inch of her own pain. 

“Please,” he wheezes. “Don’t laugh.”

Tears gather at the corner of her eyes. “I’m having trouble _not.”_

He stares her down, and it would be chilling - if he wasn’t so cute.    



	3. Chapter 3

Emily understands frustration and weakness. If she had the skills she acquired later in life, she could have done so much more. Her mother, a successful escape from the Golden Cat. But some things aren’t meant to be, and she accepted that a long time ago.

Corvo had been a great teacher, patient and kind and always pushing her to do better.

Emily is not a good teacher. Impatient and always working a smile when her student slips or wavers or trips over himself. They’re playing a game, almost childish. Probably because she did play it as a child. 

She stands on a roof, facing the city at night. Low, flickering lights and voices of the people still roaming the streets meet her. Somewhere behind her, a young man unused to his own body attempts hiding in shadows and keeping his boots from scraping the ground too loudly. He’s unsuccessful. Or maybe she’s just too good, too trained to be on the lookout. Too aware that he’s going to sneak up on her.

Or try to.

She can tell that this attempt isn’t going to be any better than the last forty or so.

She holds her arms close to her body, jacket pulling taut across the back, hands on her elbows. She stands straight and still, as perfect as a statue.

He breathes too loud. She hears the short pants of someone far too out of shape. Such a poor boy. He’s at her left, and he’s managed to keep his feet from scraping the broken rubble of the roof.

Something shatters the almost-silence that’s enveloped them. Glass explodes, close enough that a small shard slides across her leg and there’s an uncomfortable sting that stuns her nerves. In that brief second, it’s all he needs to come up on her right. One arm wraps around her waist, pulling her back against his chest. The other holds a knife, dull and useless because he can’t be trusted with sharp just yet.

He - he tricked her.

“Empress,” he greets, tone smug and so like his godly self that she rolls her eyes.

“Any closer, and the glass could have made a worse impact,” she lectures.

His cheek is against hers as he looks over her shoulder. “How else would I have been able to win?”

A fair point. He wouldn’t have.

She turns her head, just a fraction, teeth scraping his bare jaw. “You’re learning.”

Green eyes meet her gaze, bright and eager. “Praise?”

“I acknowledge ingenuity when I have to.” 

And it’s as close as she can get now to something that’s more, something deeper. She turns in his embrace, her chest against his now. His breath catches, and it’s just so funny how easily the human parts of him are distracted by her. All he is is human parts.

“It’s something you always look for,” she points out, voice low, almost a purr. 

Her gaze dips to his lips, the curve of his thin mouth, and his fingers dig into her hips. He leans closer, nose bumping hers. 

And she dances away from him just as easily. “We’re not done. Come on."


End file.
